Conon of Samos

280?-220?

B. C. Greek Astronomer and Mathematician

Conon of Samos is known primarily for his work as an astronomer, in particular his discovery of the constellation Coma Berenices. He also made significant contributions to mathematics in his discussion of conics, which influenced Apollonius of Perga (262?-190? B.C.). A friend of Archimedes (287?-212 B.C.), he may have had an impact on the work of that great mathematician and scientist as well.

As court astronomer to Egyptian ruler Ptolemy III Euergetes, Conon named the famous constellation after Ptolemy's queen Berenice II. (These names, along with Cleopatra, were a fixture of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and continued through the era of the last Ptolemaic pharaoh, Cleopatra VII—the famous Cleopatra—two centuries later.) It was said that when Ptolemy returned from a campaign in Syria in 246 B.C., Berenice cut off a lock of her hair and offered it at the temple of Arsinoë Zephyritis. This was significant because the Greek Ptolemies, taking their cue from an Egyptian tradition that went back some 2,500 years, were regarded as gods themselves. Thus it posed something of a crisis when the lock of Berenice's hair was lost.

Conon redeemed the situation somewhat, from a public relations standpoint at least, by naming his recently discovered constellation "the lock Berenice." Coma Berenices consists of seven faint stars near the tail of Leo, and between that constellation and those of Virgo and Boötes. In time, the constellation would be a topic of poets such as the Greek Callimachus, as presented in his Berenikes plokamos (The lock of Berenice). Nearly 2,000 years after Conon, Alexander Pope satirized this tradition in Rape of the Lock, a mock epic in which Berenices's stolen lock appears in the sky as a new star.

In the meantime, Conon himself had become a figure celebrated by poets of Rome's golden age, who depicted him as the model of an astronomer. According to Catullus (84-54 B.C.), he "discerned all the lights of the vast universe, and disclosed the risings and settings of the stars, how the fiery brightness of the sun is darkened, and how the stars retreat at fixed times."

Seneca (3? B.C.-A.D. 65) wrote that Conon "recorded solar eclipses observed by the Egyptians," and Ptolemy (100?-170) claimed he had revealed 17 "signs of the seasons" in his De astrologia. The latter, like all of Conon's other writings, has long since disappeared. As for his friendship with Archimedes, it is likely that they met in Alexandria. Archimedes became a great admirer of Conon, and, according to Pappus (fl. c. A.D. 320), based his famous spiral of Archimedes on a shape discovered by Conon.

Apollonius maintained that Conon's Pros Thrasydaion (In reply to Thrasydaeus), a work that addressed the points of intersection of conics, including circles, contained numerous mistakes. Yet Apollonius himself based much of the discussion of conic sections in his Conics, Book IV, on the work of Conon.

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